Record High Temperature

About two hours ago my home weather station measured the highest temperature of the year: 103.1 degrees F. This is shy of the highest I’ve ever seen, which was 104.1 degrees F from last summer.

My station’s temperature sensor is out of direct sunlight but is close to the brick foundation of the south side of my house. I wonder sometimes if the hot brick skews the temperature to the high side. If I wanted to be a stickler about it, I could build a Stevenson screen but I’m not that concerned with accuracy!

Yet, anyway. Heh.

How Does Landis Explain This?

The New York Times is quoting anonymous sources who claim Floyd Landis had synthetic testosterone in his urine sample. If this is true it will be really hard to explain it as anything other than cheating.

Tests on the backup B sample are expected by the end of this week. The saga continues . . .

Got Old Stamps? Find Out Their Value

Postage rates change faster than oil prices nowadays. As a result its easy to wind up with a pile of stamps that say ‘first class,’ but whose value has long since changed.

Today I found a page on the U.S. Postal Service website which shows the value of these nondenominated stamps. You can refer to the Basic Standards For Mailing Service html page, or download a prettier PDF file for reference.

Dishes Getting Ridiculous

I picked up three surplus DBS dishes today with an eye on picking up a couple more FTA satellites. I can’t wait to hook them up to my MythTV box to see what I can tune in.

Cheap Thoughts: Sales Tax Holiday

If this upcoming sales tax holiday is such a wonderful thing, why can’t every day be a holiday?

The Battle Of Athens, Tennessee

The AP wire has a fascinating feature recalling the Battle Of Athens, an armed battle that took place sixty years ago in rural Tennessee between corrupt deputies and grizzled WWII veterans who’d had enough of corruption. No one was seriously hurt in the shootout but it spelled the end of the political machines in much of the South.

“The lesson is that people ought to take voting a whole lot more seriously than they do and not let things get out of hand,” said Harold Powers, a witness to the battle. “Don’t let the politicians just take over.”

How true.

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